Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/55

Rh by, he said "Oh, is that all? Let us go to dinner." At table he inquired what had become of Madame de Lamballe and the other female prisoners. A guest significantly drew his hand across his throat. Orleans said, "I understand," and changed the subject. One of the Englishmen, overcome with horror, had, according to Peltier, slipped away unnoticed.

Captain George Monro, probably a son of Sir Harry Monro, Bart., also saw something of the barbarities at the Abbaye, and on December 17, describing how people were stopped in the streets, watches and rings taken, and even earrings pulled off, he wrote: "I myself never move out but with pistols in my pocket, as I find them more necessary here than in Turkey." Monro remained till the condemnation of Louis XVI., and sent despatches chiefly relating to the British Jacobins in Paris, with whom he pretended to fraternise, but his position was unofficial and indeed unsafe. "He was not only suspected, but marked here," says Somers, who for a time took his place, and who deemed it prudent to disguise his political reports in mercantile language. One of Somers's letters announces that Morgan, the son of an Irish M.P., was in Paris, and had offered to assassinate George III. On the 1st February 1793 war was declared. In the following